Build muscle by heavy lifting eating after workout?
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I planning to join a gym soon. Just wanted to know more about body building.
I was wondering how body building helps build muscle? Is it because of the heavy weights or because of the food we eat due to all the workout?
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3 Responses to “Build muscle by heavy lifting eating after workout?”
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You need to lift heavy to get big. The repetitions don’t really matter, as long as the weight is bloody heavy!
I’m a massive fan of reaching failure for each exercise, anyone who doesn’t reach failure for each exercise isn’t training hard enough or doesn’t have the mental strength to pull it off.
It is true that failure is not necessary, only progression is. But reaching failure is the most accurate way to ensure progression. Progression is simply adding more weight or more reps to each exercise, every single week.
If you do decide to go to failure for each exercise, then only do 1 set for each exercise. Anymore then 1 set is a waste of precious time (unless you want to do a light warm up set).
Anyway the body builds muscle to protect itself. You don’t have to train like a body builder to get big, you could pull cars, climb cliffs, through big rocks, lift bricks, cut down trees, lift logs, split wood, tear books in half etc.
Your body adapts to it’s environment. If you provide an environment where it is facing tough physical challenges that require the use of muscle, then it will respond by giving you more muscle to make these challenges easier.
For example take a look at a marathon runner, the runners body needs to be light, low in muscle mass and skinny.
Then take a look at a professional wood chopper, his body needs to have good balance and incredible upper body strength to swing that massive axe around and cut up the chunk of wood. How many wood choppers do you see that look like a marathon runner? None. Because they would die if their body didn’t adjust to heavy axe swinging environment. Plus the fact that wood choppers would eat like a horse compared to a little scrawny marathon runner.
To build muscle it is true that you need to eat a lot of protein, and preferably every 3 hours. So in that respect it is both heavy weights and the food we eat.
Its both, the heavy weight lifting shreds your muscles, then all the protein you eat repairs all the little tears you made in your muscles and the result is more muscle mass.
Tony,
Great response! I think it’s important that people understand the fact that you don’t have to hit the gym and lift weights as your only recourse for building muscle. Dynamic moves work just as well and it is truly all about making the muscle work hard, break down, and then repair. It through that repair process that muscle building occurs.
And yes, since food’s primary function for any of us, is simply as fuel, eating is imperative to building muscle as well…However, if you want a premium fuel, you have to eat high quality food.
Thanks
Tony